Not With You
by idioticonion
Summary: Ted/Robin get back together. Spoilers for Season 4 up to Ep 10 "The Fight", then goes AU.
1. Chapter 1

She watches Barney and she notices a million little things about him: Like the fine white laughter-lines around his eyes, fading now that the summer sun had left New York for another year. The way his blue eyes seem flat and his jokes seem forced. The way he doesn't do certain things any more and their absence seems more jarring and obvious as the weeks go by.

Robin wonders why no-one else has noticed.

They never seem to see him more than once or twice a week any more but that can be explained away - Lily and Marshall have a new life now and keep talking about babies, and she and Ted… well, that's half the problem. Robin is surprised that they see Barney at all. But then he was friends with Ted, Lily and Marshall before he was friends with her. She supposes that he doesn't want to give up that contact, no matter how painful it must be for him.

Barney never leaves McLaren's with a bimbo any more. Sure, he'll go and hit on some random girl if anyone seems to notice his abstinence, but sometimes she'll walk past the bar and overhear what he's actually saying and he's never really trying to score. Robin supposes that Barney gets his rocks off elsewhere and the thought makes ice-cubes in her belly.

Ted leans over and kisses her, a goofy smile on his face. "This is _so_ great," he says, and out of the corner of her eye she can see that Barney's got this look, like Marshall's just given him two slaps in a row. "Robin… I'm so glad we got back together. Now you're staying in New York… You know, after Japan and everything, I really think this can work."

One moment of weakness was all it had taken. She was feeling so low and Barney was being so confusing and she'd never had time to sort out how she felt about him.

Moving in with Ted had lead to the biggest mistake she'd ever made; a relapse of epic proportions. Ted was wrong. Nothing had changed, not really. She still wanted to travel. It was just that now she'd had one sobering experience, she needed time to lick her wounds and hide in a safe place, gathering her strength.

And Ted, well, he was safe…

*--*--*

Barney was helpless in orbit around her. It was like he could feel her presence, with a sixth sense, wherever she was in the room. She was a tiny object with a disproportionate mass and so she bent the fabric of the universe around her.

He tried to pull away, to break away, but he was caught in her tractor beam.

Sometimes he closed his eyes and he imagined balling his hand into a fist and striking out, hurting Ted, hitting him again and again until his face was mashed into a bloodied pulp and there were bits of meat and bone decorating his knuckles.

Perhaps then she'd take him seriously.

He'd never lift a finger to hurt her though. Even though she'd taken his heart and ripped it right out from his chest, stomping on it with her neat, stiletto-healed feet.

He'd always known that hooking up again with Robin would be risky, but for those few, blissful days he'd honestly thought they could make it. _He_ could make it.

Now he knew what a fool he'd been. You opened yourself up to someone and they soon realised they had the power to hurt you. Shannon had done it. Ted had done it. Now Robin was doing it and Ted was her unwitting accomplice. Because Ted didn't know what had happened between him and Robin, how intense and incredible and dangerous it had been for that too-brief time.

This had all happened to Barney before and now he could feel himself falling apart again. But this time he had friends, a job, a social structure. He couldn't reinvent himself in order to find a way to knit the broken pieces back together.

So every week he'd sit there, watching Ted and Robin, trying so hard to act normally that he'd feel a little piece of himself disintegrate. Soon there would be nothing left.


	2. Chapter 2

His breath ruffled her hair. His palm was pressed against her navel, fingers splayed across her belly, protecting her, claiming her. Ted didn't make a sound as he slept. Ted was at peace in a way that she somehow couldn't ever be.

Robin lay awake in his arms and all she could think about was how things had got so messed up with Barney. She'd never seen him properly angry before. Oh she's seen plenty of him playing-angry, posturing-angry or full of tightly-wound fury at the world. But she'd never seen him angry like this, not even when Ted had broken their friendship. She'd never seen him so full of hate.

She didn't even know what she'd done to deserve this. She didn't even know what had happened. Well, she knew what had happened but perhaps not why. And now she was left with this sickening feeling of guilt that wouldn't go away. That evening, Ted had been working late again and instead of a relaxing evening at the bar with her friends, Robin had been left alone for hours, holed up in the apartment with a bottle (or two) of wine and had found herself missing Barney.

Which was just… unfair.

After all, it had been alcohol that had got them into this position in the first place. She should resent him for messing her up like this. But still she missed him.

*--*--*

He'd never have done anything without her say-so. Not that he'd ever needed a woman's permission before he hit on her but this was Robin and she was his friend. Friend, not Bro, not really. No matter what twisty-turny emotions he was feeling inside, he'd never have led her on.

But she'd given him that tight-lipped smile and there was something hard and unhappy around her eyes and he'd reached out to her. Why did he always reach out to her?

Why did it always feel so right when she was nestled in the crook of his arm, her tears dampening his shoulder, the sweet scent of her breath curling around them both, confusing his senses in a heady miasma of scotch and sadness?

He'd told himself that he wasn't going to lose control this time.

But she was there, full of nostalgia and longing and lingering embarrassment from Marshall's terrible karaoke version of "Let's go to the mall", and she'd needed someone (just not necessarily Barney) to lean on. She hadn't broken contact all the way back to his place, not even when getting into the cab. Her fingers had curled around his bicep, pulling him in after her; she was always pulling him in and he was always circling her, faster and faster until he was dashed into small pieces on the sharp rocks of her defences.

The soft skin of her throat tasted sweet, like the frosted cupcakes Ted used to force on him when he dated that baker-chick. He tried to identify her perfume, just to distract himself from how she was making him feel because if he gave into that, the sensation was dizzying. He pulled at her blouse (clumsy) his hands circling her waist and pushing her, gently but firmly, onto his sofa; a sofa that was worn and shaped with the backs of so many, many other women. He tried to focus on that, too, the parade of conquests his apartment had seen, and not the fact that simply running his tongue in a long swathe across the swell of her breast was making him hard enough to lose it in seconds.

She was tugging at his belt, pulling at it, fingers fumbling his fly as he tried not to grind himself against them when his brain sort-of shorted out and between desperate gasps he blurted: "I love you…"

He felt her freeze.

Oh no.

*--*--*

Why couldn't men just let it be about sex? Clean, simple and easy. Fun. Why did they have to bring emotion into it?

Of course, it was easy to be swept up in it. There was nothing sweeter than real, heart-felt "I love you" sex. Robin had that sex with Ted and she'd meant it. When they'd broken up, it had burned her far more deeply that she'd ever realised. What if Ted was the only man she would ever be capable of loving?

So when Barney had told her he loved her, Robin had allowed herself to get carried away in the moment.

Well… until the moment had stretched out and become a bunch of whole days…

*--*--*

When Barney lost the very last piece of himself he started haunting other bars across the island, places where no-one knew him. He dated a bunch of girls - properly dated them. The relationships would last a few weeks and he'd never, ever walk out of any of them straight after sex. It was always the girls who broke it off, always for different reasons and yet always for the same reason. It was always about him. He guessed that it took that long for them to see that he was a hollow man.

Marshall was the one who sat him down, staging a one-man intervention. His friend had been full of confusion and questions, firing them again and again, mercilessly. But Barney was uncompromising, refusing to explain himself. There was no more "himself" left to explain.

One day, at work, Ted and Lily came to visit Marshall and when Barney saw them all together he felt something like pain in his guts.

He took a vicodin and shredded his iPhone because he didn't know what was worse - getting accusing text messages from them or getting no messages at all.

*--*--*

Was it wrong to fantasise about another man when you made love with your boyfriend? Ted would kiss her, the weight of his body pinning her down, surrounding her with a fog of choking emotion and she'd long to do something really dirty, really filty, really fun. She wished she was free.

Barney had said "I love you" to so many women, how could it suddenly be true with her?

Barney was her friend. Of course he "loved" her.

Oh, Robin had told herself so many lies.

She and Ted had just connected, just fitted together again. That's all it was! It seemed so simple, so obvoious. They were both alone and lonely and they had each other. Why not get together again? For one night, it had felt like old times. It had wiped away the confusion of those heady few days with Barney.

And then when Ted had announced they were back together, at their table at McLaren's, she'd seen Barney's smile freeze on his face and that expression had become a rictus grin throughout the night. Marshall and Lily had expressed some concern but Ted had talked them round. Robin was the girl he'd always wanted, after all.

Barney hadn't said anything at all. Ted assumed that his friend was angry with him because of the whole bro/wingman thing - what fun was it for a single guy to hang out with two couples?

But there was one moment, that night - the first thing Barney had said to her on the subject. The last thing Barney had ever said to her on the subject.

"But _I love you_," He'd said, so angrily, so accusingly, as if she'd taken a knife to his heart.

And since then she'd watched his love turn to hate.


	3. On The Rise

_Marshall's one-man Barney Intervention - expanded from "Not with you"_

There was a piece of cloth hung over the screen of Barney's computer with one hand-written word "Intervention" scrawled across it. Marshall sat in the dark and waited for him, having bribed Barney's new secretary to let him in the office.

When Barney arrived and switched on the light he looked hostile and… older. How could he look so much older in only four weeks?

"How was Portugal?" Marshall said, casually.

"What _is_ this?" Barney answered, holding Marshall's gaze, scowling as if Marshall were an irritant that needed to be got rid of.

Marshall had seen Barney do that to a few people before - especially in negotiation situations and in meetings. But he was his friend. He tried his best not to be intimidated. He'd taken the freakin' New York Bar exam, for god's sake! He'd gotten married with a half-shaven head! He could do this!

Barney glared at him, unblinkingly. Perhaps this wasn't going to be as easy as Marshall had thought.

"Okay Barney," He said, getting up from behind the desk. "This is an intervention. I know you haven't been to Portugal. I know you've been avoiding us all this time and I think I know why. It's Robin and Ted, isn't it?"

Barney's eyes narrowed, almost imperceptibly, but it somehow focused the force of his ill-will into a white-hot shaft. Marshall practically flinched at the intensity.

Still, he'd made a hit, obviously.

In the past few weeks of Barney-less-ness, Lily had slowly cracked and begged Marshall to try and sort things out. Ted had just got more and more furious at his friend, constantly bemoaning the fact that if Barney really _was_ his friend then he'd support him instead of throwing a childish fit (again) because his wingman had hooked up with a girl. "He was never as bad as this when I was with Stella!" Ted had ranted. "He's never, ever been this bad!"

And slowly, over the weeks, Barney had ceased to be a part of their lives.

Which was weird.

Marshall would never have said that he had any kind of deep friendship with Barney. He would have explained that he didn't think Barney had ever let anyone get really close to him. But with Barney gone… he realised what a huge hole there was in the world.

Marshall couldn't give that up without a fight.

"Come on, man!" Marshall shouted, banging the desk with the flat of his hand. "I know you care about Ted. You practically killed yourself trying to get to him this summer, remember that? I know you care about Robin! She's, like, your best friend! How can you just walk away from them? Away from _us_? Do you know how much Lily misses you? This is ridiculous Barney!"

Barney casually shrugged off his jacked, draping it across a hanger and hooking it on the wall by the window. "Marshall, go away," he muttered, circling the desk and taking the seat behind it. "Go away and don't come back."

Marshall let out a semi-hysterical laugh. "Just tell me _why_? Why have you turned your back on us all? This is just insane, dude! Have you gone mad? We're you best friends! You can't just… just… what are you doing, even?"

Barney unpicked the corner of the mini Intervention banner from his computer and ripped it off the screen. Balling it into a wedge, he tossed it at the trash can, sinking it in one go. He bent over the computer and began to type.

Marshall let out a frustrated sigh. "I can't let you _do_ this, Man!" He dashed around the desk and plonked himself down in front of Barney, sitting on (and breaking) his keyboard.

Barney looked up at him in surprise, then got to his feet, uncertainly, taking two steps back.

Marshall stood up, the plastic snapping beneath him as he did so. He backed Barney up against the wall and wrapped him up in a bear-hug, holding him tightly and stroking one hand over the small of his back as Lily had done to him so lovingly, so many, many times.

But he never felt his friend relax. Barney stood, wound up tight, every muscle rigid. And when Marshall pulled back there was one instant when he saw his friend's expression, so deeply etched with pain and terror that Marshall was afraid he'd broken him as effectively as he'd broken his keyboard.

Then the Stinson mask was back up. Cold, implacable.

Marshall slowly let go and shook his head. "I thought that there was still something good within you, man." He said. "Something real. But I guess you've just gone the full Vader on our asses?"

Even hours later, when Marshall got back to Dowistrepla and tried to explain the whole thing to Lily, the expression on Barney's face as he left still made him shiver.


End file.
